diff --git a/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/ml/clustering/KMeans.scala b/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/ml/clustering/KMeans.scala
index 2a7fdb08fc244..d78620896dc15 100644
--- a/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/ml/clustering/KMeans.scala
+++ b/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/ml/clustering/KMeans.scala
@@ -122,6 +122,7 @@ class KMeansModel private[ml] (
     validateAndTransformSchema(schema)
   }
 
+  private[clustering]
   def predict(features: Vector): Int = parentModel.predict(features)
 
   def clusterCenters: Array[Vector] = parentModel.clusterCenters